unlock secret of how lotus stays dry

How does the lotus stay dry even while growing in slime? This was a question that had intrigued scientists for ages. It took them an ultra high speed camera, a powerful microscope and an audio speaker to unlock the secret.

"We faced a tricky problem -- water droplets that fall on the leaf easily roll off, while condensate that grows from within the leaf's nooks and crannies is sticky and remains trapped," said Jonathan Boreyko, a third-year graduate student at Duke University Pratt School of Engineering (DUPSE), involved in the study.

"Scientists and engineers have long wondered how these sticky drops are eventually repelled from the leaf after their impalement into the tiny projections," Boreyko said.

"After bringing lotus leaves into the lab and watching the condensation as it formed, we were able to see how the sticky drops became unsticky."

The key was videotaping the process while the lotus leaf rested on top of the woofer portion of a stereo speaker at low frequency.

Condensation was created by cooling the leaf. It turned out that after being gently vibrated for a fraction of a second, the sticky droplets gradually unstuck themselves and jumped off the leaf.

"This solves a long-standing puzzle in the field," said DUPSE assistant professor Chuan-Hua Chen.

"People have observed that condensation forms every night on the lotus leaf. When they come back in the morning the water is gone and the leaf is dry."

"The speaker reproduced in the lab what happens every day in nature, which is full of subtle vibrations, especially for the lotus, which has large leaves atop long and slender stems," said Chen, according to a DUPSE release.

The results of these experiments will allow engineers to employ man-made surfaces much like the lotus leaf in settings where the removal of condensation and the transfer of heat are necessary.

Windows 7 AT The Definitive Review

After Vista's less-than-stellar reception, it's a surprise to see that Microsoft's latest operating system introduction has been met with critical praise around the world. Most early testers have not found anything major to complain about in the beta versions and even the final release of Windows 7, which has been circulating privately for some time.

And now, it's the moment of truth - We bring you our verdict after spending more than a month with this final version of the successor to Vista (as well as XP, which many users have not given up despite its age). While it's clear a lot of effort has gone into making sure old mistakes are not repeated, there is a lot more to consider than just the hype.

Improving all the basics

Windows 7 is satisfied with fewer resources than those required by Vista: Microsoft recommends a 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM. The company has learned a lot from the mistakes made during the Vista launch: many teams of developers sat in their laboratories with everyday PC users and kept a close watch on them while they were working, as described in several blog posts that they have published. With this knowledge, they have tried to optimizeWindows ' handling. A few annoying things that users have had to struggle with for a long time have been eliminated, and new integrated functions like Aero Snap and Aero Shake on the desktop allow for entirely new ways of window management. You can now minimizewindows and call them up again with mouse gestures, e.g. a simple shake movement, or can also tile windows to half the screen with a familiar drag and drop.

Installation: The goal of making Windows 7's installation quicker and easier has largely been met. The process is entirely graphical and doesn't need much user intervention. You can set up your network during the process so you're ready to download the latest updates as soon as installation is done.

Taskbar: The new taskbar is the most obvious change, designed to make window management faster. It's more powerful, since it lets you launch programs and see previews of openwindows, but the changes will take some time to get used to. Text labels are gone by default, and the bar shows only an icon even if you have opened multiple copies of one application. When you hover the cursor over this icon,Windows 7 shows a live preview of the window contents complete with trendy Aero glass effects. Multiple open windows are shown as individual thumbnails in a horizontal bar, and programs can use their button space to show notifications such as file copy progress or error messages.

The former Quick Launch bar is therefore merged into the taskbar, which unfortunately makes it confusing to see which programs are actually running and which are not. Applications can be pinned so they are always on the taskbar whether running or not. Moreover, the familiar positions of your icons can sometimes change without the user realizing it. And you cannot just drag documents or media files onto the icons of applications to make them open instantly in those applications anymore. Luckily, the customization options let you turn on text labels, but you can't disable all the new modifications.

Desktop: The 'Show Desktop' icon in the Quick Launch area, which has been a familiar fixture, is no longer there. Instead of that you can call up the Aero Peek function using a new button at the end of the taskbar, even beyond the clock. If you hover over the button with the mouse, transparent outlines of all openwindows are displayed, so you can see the desktop through them. This kind of transparency effect does not necessarily consume your CPU power, sinceWindows 7 can accelerate it completely on the graphics card.

Aero also includes a snapping effect which lets you drag windows to the top or edges of the screen to maximize or tile them respectively (and the [Win] key can be used for loads of new shortcut combinations, including all the Aero Snap features). There is no demarcated sidebar for gadgets, which are still there, and can just be dropped anywhere on the desktop. Themes make it easy to group settings for wallpaper, sounds, and Aero glass color and opacity. And the OS finally includes the ability to rotate the wallpaper at adjustable intervals like a slide show.

Notification area: This has also been cleaned up; the most important change is it will show only system icons by default, i.e. the battery status, volume, network, and security alerts. All others are lumped into a flyout menu unless you specifically allow them to be displayed.

Jump lists: One of our favorite new innovations is the introduction of Jump Lists, which are program-specific context menus that replace the usual right-click context menus for icons in the taskbar and entries in the Start menu. They display lists of files frequently (or in some cases recently) opened with that application, but you can also pin your favorite files onto program icons, such as songs on your media player or bookmarks on the Web browser. Once you have done this, the Jump List becomes a practical feature that saves time and clicks. Applications such as media players can include playback control buttons, and future software releases will incorporate more such functionality to allow for quick controls and manipulations.

Libraries: Designed to help you cope with the ever-increasing mess of files, libraries act as virtual folders which aggregate your default 'My Documents' contents with any other locations on your hard drive(s). For example the 'Videos' library can show the contents of the 'Videos' folder as well as your movie collection on another hard drive and your shared home videos on an external storage device or networked PC.

You can even sort and organize libraries by file metadata including the date they were created, the artist, album, genre, length, etc. This makes it possible to manage and share all media files centrally. Libraries aren't just virtual though, you can save files to them and they will be placed in the default folder for that file type. As an added advantage,Windows Search indexes the libraries automatically. If you are searching for files that are stored there, Windows 7 shows you the results in a split second.

Enhanced Functions

Search: The integrated search function offers another new and practical feature, it not only rummages through the computer but can also be used to search specific sites on the Internet or a corporate server from the desktop. This feature was primarily intended for corporate environments, but requires only a small file in the Federated Search (also known as OpenSearch) OSDX format; so some sites have started offering them for anyone to download. The feature isn't immediately visible until you have installed these search connectors, after which they show up as options in the Search folder. We thus quickly browsed the image database at DeviantArt.com as well as Google News, and the results seemed as if they were stored locally. You can right-click and copy or save search results too.

Windows Media Player: Version 12 of the default media player has also taken a big leap forward. While Vista and XP users have always needed to install additional codecs or use extra software like the famous all-purpose VLC player just to view DivX movies from the Internet, Windows 7 includes almost all standard codecs such as AAC or H.264. WMP also hardly stresses the CPU even in the case of HD videos and remained under ten percent resource consumption in our observations. Media Center builds on this further with improved file handling from network storage and support for Internet TV.

Paint and Wordpad: Both these programs have received facelifts to make them look like Office 2010 with its second-generation Ribbon interface. This makes both of them stick out from the rest of the operating system; more so because they don't have enough features to justify the Ribbon. Still, Paint now comes with different brushes and you can create custom shapes.

Multitouch: We haven't been able to test Windows 7 on a touch-capable device yet, but laptops and tablets have already been announced by most manufactureRs With OS-level support for finger-based pinching and twisting, the way we interact with software could change profoundly. Notice how the taskbar is wider, and the icons are more spaced out-many parts of the OS have been designed to be finger-friendly. Early demos of drawing in Paint, playing interactive games and panning around Virtual Earth look great. Using touch to go through the Start menu or drag and drop files between folders will undoubtedly add a new dimension to our interaction with computeRs Aero Shake and Aero Snap suddenly make even more sense than they first appeared to.

Practical Additions

User Account Control (UAC): This should have brought more security to Vista, but it only put users off by constantly bombarding them with messages. Windows 7 now makes it less aggressive, for instance the user can deactivate messages that pop up when he/she makes deliberate modifications to settings. Windows 7 only shows warnings when programs want to modify the OS automatically. This new concept reduces the UAC dialogs by roughly 30 percent though this comes at the cost of a few new security risks. Yet, the balance will be better and the bigger risk of people disabling UAC altogether is avoided.

XP emulation: Windows 7 is characterized by its backwards compatibility; all Vista drivers can also run under the new operating system. Microsoft also offers a solution for older programs-the XP mode, which is only available in the Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise versions. You can make tools that are not compatible with Windows 7 run by means of virtualization. The free virtual XP integrates itself unnoticed into the actual operating system. Visually, there is no difference as the programs do not run inside a demarcated window which is common for virtual machines. In addition, we did not notice any significant lag in comparison with a pure XP installation. The host system is totally transparent. You can install tools so that they always run in XP mode, with regular shortcuts in the Start menu as if they were normal programs. But XP emulation increases the hardware requirements: 2 GB of memory and a processor that supports hardware virtualization are a must.

Action Center: This is where all your system-level alerts and maintenance tasks can be taken care of from. Like the erstwhile Security Center, you can check the status of your Windows updates, firewall, antivirus and backups. You can tweak notification settings, configure UAC, and even launch the System Restore wizard from here.

Speed improvements: If you have previously worked with Vista, you should find Windows 7 on the same hardware faster and more responsive. The new OS has plenty of tweaks and refinements to focus on pure performance. One indicator of this is that while Vista loaded 45 or more services on startup, Windows 7 loads only 30. Battery life on laptops is also noticeably improved, thanks partly to more aggressive settings for going to sleep and hibernating when idle.

Network configuration: Windows 7 offers many reasons for network administrators and even home users with multiple PCs to upgrade. They can now connect multiple PCs with improved file sharing and security measures with the 'Homegroups' function. You can exchange music, videos or documents between computers provided that Windows 7 is installed on all of them. XP users will be left out just like Linux and OS X users, but a Vista update to enable Homegroups has been hinted at. Setup is easy; if you didn't go through it during Windows' installation, you can create a Homegroup through the 'Network and Sharing Center' and determine what data you want to share. Then set a 10-digit password. Other computers are added to the group by entering this password. Windows 7 will then show these computers clearly in the explorer just like an external hard disk. The Windows media player also shows the shared songs and videos.

The complicated setup of network printers is also a thing of the past. With Windows 7, you just have to install the hardware once. All group members automatically get the driver and can use the printer as if it was connected directly. If you take your office laptop home, you can switch over to the home network (provided that the office computer is configured within a domain).

System recovery: If the PC refuses to start, Windows 7 has something new to help. The 'Repair' function which you can call up while booting using the [F8] key now offers an interface through which the user can import system recovery points or reconstruct a system image. Vista introduced the convenient Shadow Copies feature to revert to previous versions of files in its more expensive editions, and this is now also available in the Home edition of 7.

Sensors: Many laptops come with light sensors to control backlighting, but now the OS can be aware of outside conditions too. Sensors for light, noise, temperature, GPS location, physical direction and position, etc would enable a whole new generation of user-specific applications, and transform the way people use mapping services and follow directions. Of course a misused sensor also increases the possibility of super-targeted advertising and the potential damage that malware can do, so those worried about privacy can turn the feature off through the Control Panel.

Device Support

Drivers: Most current hardware should work on Windows 7 without a hitch, since there are no major changes to the device driver model like Vista had. That means upgraders won't face the same headaches that they did last time. In fact most major hardware vendors have had their drivers ready for a while now, and the nearly two months between 7's finalization and its retail launch will have given everyone enough time to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Device Stage: Although barely any devices support it right now, Device Stage is designed to allow users to control their peripherals through a standard interface. When plugged in, printers, cellphones, digital cameras and other peripherals that support Device Stage will launch a window allowing you to perform common tasks such as syncing files and performing diagnostics, as well as order consumables from the manufacturer and check the battery status. Device Stage windows will be customized with the product image and manufacturer's branding.

Graphics: More of a software improvement, Windows 7 will of course be the first version to enable DirectX 11 with compatible graphics cards. Its DirectCompute component accounts for the smoothness of the Aero effects, since these are handed off to the graphics processor. DX11 will also allow the next generation of 3D games to use more realistic effects, better shadows and improved multi-threading.

Virtual Wi-Fi: This feature is so ambiguous that we wouldn't have discovered it without prompting from Microsoft, and we apparently need new drivers before it can be tested. But the basic idea is that the OS can now recognize multiple virtual instances of your Wi-Fi adapter, letting you establish multiple connections without additional hardware. In theory, this should let you share a Wi-Fi connection with other devices, connect to multiple Wi-Fi networks simultaneously, or create a mesh in which PCs access the network through each other to boost range.

Virtual Hard Drives: Windows 7 can natively mount VHD virtual hard drive files as regular volumes, which are treated just like physical drives or partitions. You can even boot into another instance of Windows 7 which is installed in this virtual image.

Features and Corporates

Apart from enhanced media and user friendliness, Windows 7 comes with a few features designed to make corporate deployment easier. Most of these will be available only in the Business and Ultimate editions.

Direct Access: For those running Windows Server 2008 in their corporate environments, Direct Access allows for secure remote connections without the hassle of setting up a Virtual Private Network. It requires IPv6 and some fairly specific network infrastructure, but should allow for new levels of remote management and ease of access to networked storage, resources, and business applications.

BitLocker To Go: Drive encryption is now extended to removable drives to protect their contents even if they are physically lost. Administrators can set policies requiring BitLocker to be enabled before external drives can be used at all.

AppLocker: Similar to BitLocker, AppLocker lets administrators control which programs are allowed to run on the desktops they control. Security is enforced by pre-approving software and preventing users from installing whatever they like, but letting software update itself without upsetting the rules.

Branch Cache: For users on a single network across multiple physical locations, network resources can be cached locally to eliminate long file transfer times. Branch offices can have their own copies of data usually hosted exclusively at the head office. Permissions can be set for security, and bandwidth can be saved by reducing incremental transfeRs

Conclusion

With Windows 7, Microsoft has launched a well-thought-out and fast operating system which manages with fewer resources than its predecessor Vista required. The Home Premium version is the most suitable for a normal user; it comprises all important things like the HomeGroups functionality, multitouch support and the Media Center. Those who need professional features like the XP mode, AppLocker and VHD support should go for the Ultimate edition. Those buying new netbooks, laptops and PCs in the near future might also have the choice of the Starter and Home Basic versions.

Whichever you choose, Windows 7 is fully stable and ready for mass public use, and should not cause any problems. Upgrading from XP is worthwhile in most cases, and even Vista users will appreciate the better handling and new conveniences.

Prices

Windows 7 Home Basic - Rs 5,899

Windows 7 Home Premium - Rs 6,799

Windows 7 Professional - Rs 11,199

Windows 7 Ultimate - Rs 11,799

Toshiba's One charger that fits all mobiles

Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Japanese electronics giant Toshiba employee displays the handheld electronic gadget, a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) battery 'Dynario' for the external power source for digital products such as a mobile phone or iPod at the company's headquarters in Tokyo on October 26, 2009. Toshiba will start selling Dynario from

Internet BROWSER MADNESS

It was such a seller's market that the sellers wouldn't sell, not just yet. Trading of 5 million shares in the long-awaited initial public offering of the upstart Netscape Communications Corp. was supposed to begin last Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., when the NASDAQ whistle blew. But here it was 90 minutes later, and the institutions and portfolio managers who had received huge blocks of shares still hadn't sold any of their stock. Investors were bidding up the price so fast that the ground floor had yet to be set. What the investment banks had valued a few weeks ago at a modest $14 was soaring to $30...$45 ...$55 and into the wild blue-chip yonder. Finally, as stunned brokers nationwide sat with phones glued to both ears--buyers on one, sellers on the other--the opening price was reached: $71 a share. Only then did profiteers start cashing in: Sell, sell, sell!

Not bad for a 16-month-old company that has never earned a profit and has given away most of the software it has created. Not bad for Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, who, by day's end--when the stock price finally settled at a more reasonable $58.25--was worth $565 million. And not bad for fellow co-founder Marc Andreessen, the 24-year-old programming tyro, whose stake made him a millionaire 58.25 times over.

So what exactly was America buying into with such enthusiasm last week? The Internet, of course, that boomtown of the wired world. "The Internet has gone to Main Street," said analyst Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital, a Connecticut firm that evaluates initial public offerings for institutional investors. Netscape was "the hottest deal we've ever seen. Friends we never thought we had were calling us, asking us how they could buy shares."

Netscape, based in Mountain View, California, makes an essential piece of Internet software known as a browser, which can be thought of as the 3-D glasses your computer wears to pick up images, sounds and text on the World Wide Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet. Netscape controls a cozy 70% of the market for browsing software.

Investors are increasingly keen to buy into Internet-related companies, but have had few opportunities. Four such companies have gone public: Internet-access providers Netcom On-line Communications Services, Performance Systems International and UUNet Technologies; and another Web-browser maker, Spyglass. All are performing extremely well because the Internet is regarded as the next stage of the information revolution. Now that computers are being linked around the globe, techno-happy investors are trying to stay ahead of that curve and find the next big company. Netscape, says Lise Buyer, technology analyst at T. Rowe Price, "has the potential to be as important to the Internet as Microsoft's dos was to the personal computer."

One reason Netscape's Navigator dominates the browser market is that the company gave it away to home and school users, which in turn attracted Web-based businesses. Commercial users pay for the Netscape software that makes them accessible to browsers-another market that Netscape controls, for now. But here comes Microsoft, which has its own designs on the Internet. The software giant learned last week that the Justice Department's antitrust investigation would not delay the Microsoft Network, its ambitious online service. The network software comes bundled inside Windows 95, Microsoft's new operating system, which is supposed to be shipped to dealers on Aug. 24. Anyone who installs it will find a Microsoft Network icon on the computer-screen desktop. Click on the icon, and, assuming the computer is attached to a modem and a phone line, voile!, you're on the Microsoft Network.

That's where the potential monopoly problems lie. By one estimate, as many as 30 million people will upgrade to Windows 95 by year's end. If only 10% of them subscribe to the network, Microsoft's service will rival that of America Online, the largest of the commercial providers of online services. Justice Department antitrust lawyers say they have yet to decide whether to take action against Microsoft; they are still in the discovery process and plan to seek more Microsoft documents.

The more sobering news, though, for anyone who bought Netscape stock is that Windows 95 comes with its own browser, the Internet Explorer, a piece of software that, like other Microsoft programs, may smother all competitors. Microsoft's browser allows users to see anything on the Web that a Netscape user can see. But Netscape users won't be able to sample the library of multimedia offerings that is expected to be stored on the Microsoft Network, which has its own proprietary design. "Netscape's millions of browsers won't be a threat to us for very long,"predicted Naveen Jain, a Microsoft spokesman.

Yet the battle will be hard fought. Netscape has as many as 7 million users on the Internet. Most of them get online through independent access providers and schools, rather than large commercial services and are drawn to the Net precisely because it's neither owned nor controlled by anyone. To many of these users, the notion that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wants to dominate the Internet is blasphemy. Netscape also benefits from being smaller and more nimble than the Redmond, Washington, colossus. Netscape's management team is led by Clark, a former Stanford University professor who founded, then resigned from, the successful firm Silicon Graphics. Backing him up is James Barksdale, Netscape's ceo, who has held top jobs at AT&T, McCaw Cellular Communications and Federal Express.

But the best thing Netscape has going for it is its techies, most notably Andreessen, who, as a 22-year-old undergraduate at the University of Illinois, conceived the first graphical Web browser, Mosaic, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the fall of 1992. That bit of software transformed the drab, black-and-white, hard-to-get-around-in world of the Internet into a colorful place and stimulated an explosion in new kinds of content, from Web-based magazines to online casinos. Mosaic, which is licensed by the university to customers, was also given away and gained an estimated 2 million users in a single year, doing as much to popularize the Internet as anything else in online history, with the possible exception of E-mail. Buyer says Netscape has "corporate vision, technology vision and proven operating vision. In terms of management, they've got everything you can ask for." They also have a company that when NASDAQ closed on Friday afternoon was valued at $2 billion.

curtsy to time

Those Crazy Internet Security Questions

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Think carefully before you answer. The question is from the password retrieval system for Virgin America's Elevate frequent-flyer program, one of several a user may be prompted to answer in order to verify his or her identity. But it's not just Richard Branson's own quirky take on the standard "What's your mother's maiden name?" query, widely used for verification purposes by many banks and e-mail services. These days, security questions are getting more creative because they have to. As we make more and more personal information freely available online via our blogs, Facebook profiles, Flickr photos and Twitter, security questions based on biographical data are becoming less and less secure.

Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin discovered that last week when someone hacked into her Yahoo! e-mail account, gov.palin@yahoo.com, after typing her username into Yahoo! and clicking "Forgot your ID or password?" According to an account of the breach by someone claiming to be the perpetrator, here's what happened next:

it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)...the second was somewhat harder, the question was "where did you meet your spouse?" did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college...I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on "Wasilla high"

Bingo. The hacker read Palin's e-mails and, soon, after, screen shots appeared on Wikileaks, a website dedicated to posting leaked government and corporate documents.

"This is an attack that any 17-year-old in America could have mounted," says Ariel Rabkin, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied and written about online security, including a paper subtitled "Security Questions in the Era of Facebook." Rabkin adds, "You could do it in your living room drunk on the spur of the moment."

Hence, the growing trend toward more arcane and occasionally bizarre password retrieval questions. Sign up for an MSN/Hotmail account and you can choose from "Who was your best childhood friend?" "What was your grandfather's occupation?" or "Who is your favorite historical person?" The questions for a Citibank MasterCard account are even odder, bordering on the absurd: "Who was your archrival growing up?" "If you needed a new first name, what would it be?" and "If you could control your height, how tall would you be?" Even if a person can answer those questions, there's no guarantee the answer will be the same the next time around. (One Citibank query, for example, is "Which foreign country would you like to visit?" But the answer might well change a year later, after you've made that trip to New Zealand.)

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission passed a rule prohibiting landline and cellular phone companies from asking biographical questions for password retrieval, following the disclosure that computer company Hewlett-Packard was using the information to gain access to industry journalists' phone records — a technique known as "pretexting." Still, e-mail providers like Yahoo! and many online banking services haven't stopped using biographical questions, even as much of this information is finding its way online.

Coming up with a fail-safe system is not easy. "A good question for me might be an inexplicable question for you," says Rabkin. "It's hard to find ones that are good for everybody." Security answers have to be obscure enough that they're unguessable, while still familiar enough to the user that they won't be forgotten. And they can't be information that is easily obtainable. "Who did you buy your house from?" used to be a great question used by some banks. Although real estate sales information is public, says Rabkin, "it used to be public in the sense that you had to go down to the deeds office and look it up." Now, often all it takes is a few mouse clicks.

For that reason, fact-based questions are declining in popularity vs. those that relate to the user's preferences. But even preference questions aren't foolproof. Your favorite book? Fine, unless it's the Bible, in which case it's easily guessable. Your favorite album? Fine, unless it happens to be mentioned on your Facebook page.

Palin's security questions, it turns out, were some of the most commonly used online. "You could argue that she was dumb for picking these questions and providing her correct information," says Markus Jakobsson, a principal scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, a subsidiary of Xerox. "But we shouldn't judge her on her ability to make security-related decisions ... This is not about Yahoo! This is about industry failure." (Jakobsson is currently developing a security system that prompts users to answer a battery of preference questions when they establish an account. If they forget their password, users must answer a certain percentage of their preference questions correctly to retrieve it.)

For now, some Internet security consultants advise choosing answers that are correct, but with a twist, which could be as simple as a few numbers at the end of a maiden name, or a pet's name spelled backward.

So next time you set up an online account and are asked your pet's name, don't just say it's Max — one of the most popular dog names in the U.S. and one that a motivated hacker might guess. Say it's Xam2008.

Top 10 Internet Blunders

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist credited with creating the World Wide Web in 1989, doesn't seem like a man who has many regrets. But he admitted earlier this month at a symposium in Washington that his decision to include those annoying forward slashes in http addresses was made on a whim. If he could change one thing about the Internet now, he says, he would slash the slashes, which are completely unnecessary.

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

The BBC is undoubtedly one of the best broadcasters in the world, with a proud history and popular website. But even the "Beeb" isn't immune to screwing up once in a while. Consider the case of its "Internet expert" Guy Goma, who participated in a studio discussion in 2006 regarding music downloads and Apple Computer's victory at the London High Court against Apple Corps, the record label for the Beatles. None of the producers noticed anything funny about Goma until he responded to one of the questions by saying, "I don't know. I'm not at all sure what I'm doing here." Turns out that Goma thought he was going to be interviewed for an IT job at the BBC, not interviewed on air.

A producer, however, thought that Goma was actually the bona-fide Internet expert Guy Kewney after the receptionist mistakenly pointed Goma in his direction. And to make matters worse, Goma didn't get the job he was after either.

An Apple Premier

Two years ago, Apple posted for sale on iTunes what it thought was the season premiere of the sci-fi TV show Stargate Atlantis. The episode happened to be the show's fourth installment, however, which hadn't yet aired. The accidental leak occurred because of a mix-up over the episode production numbers and broadcast numbers. Apple removed the episode 24 hours later, but by that point, peer-to-peer networks were offering it to their users for free. To make amends, Apple gave customers who mistakenly bought the episode an iTunes credit of $2.

Google Gets Spammed

Google's spam-fighting system is apparently too good. A couple of years ago, Google accidentally mistook the company's own Custom Search Blog as spam. The Google blogging team in charge of updating the website didn't notice the warning messages indicating that the blog would be deleted if the user didn't clarify that it wasn't spam. When the blog was automatically deleted, another web user took over the domain name for the site. The Google bloggers initially suspected an external hack job, but then they realized what had gone wrong. They got the domain name back — and then presumably blogged about the whole ordeal.

Game Over

The box for Capcom's Killer7 video game said it all: "Action-packed thriller." Anyone who went to the game's official website, listed on the box as www.killer7.com, would have found a totally different kind of thriller, though. That URL belonged to a hardcore porn site. The game's site should have been listed as www.killer-7.com.

Never Use Your Name As a Password

Choosing a strong password is a challenge for many of us. Who out there hasn't used (or thought about using) 'password' or '1234' at one point in their lives? A staffer working for the state of Nevada proved abysmally bad at selecting a username and password two years ago when step-by-step instructions were accidentally posted on the state's official website giving instructions on how aides should send out the governor's weekly e-mail updates. In the instructions, the Outlook username was given as "governor" and the password as "kennyc." The former governor's name? Kenny C. Guinn.

Via-comedy

The media behemoth Viacom has engaged in numerous battles with YouTube over copyright infringement over the years. But two years ago, Viacom ended up in the embarrassing position of mistakenly bringing to light the fact that it had committed some copyright infringement of its own. When Viacom demanded that YouTube remove a clip of a North Carolina politician's campaign commercial from a VH1 program called Web Junk 2.0, it emerged that VH1 hadn't obtained permission to use the clip in the first place. The politician, Christopher Knight, was clearly miffed, summing up the situation thusly: "Folks, this is, as we say down here in the South, 'bass-ackwards.'" Thankfully for Knight, Viacom backed down and YouTube reinstated the video.

You've Got (More Than) M@il!

In 2006, AOL voluntarily released the search data of 650,000 of its users over a three-month period — some 20 million web queries in total. Although the AOL username had been changed to a random ID number, one could analyze all of the searches conducted by a single user and deduce who the person was. Understandably, the online community was outraged and AOL acted swiftly, removing the data and issuing apologetic press releases.

"This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it," spokesman Andrew Weinstein said in one rather honest missive.

Doing the Worm

On Nov. 2, 1988, Robert Morris, a Cornell computer science graduate student, wrote an experimental program that he injected into the Internet. It would become the computer world's first "worm." Although the student's intentions were not necessarily nefarious — he was testing out how large the Internet actually was — the worm wreaked havoc online, rendering about 600,000 computers unusable. Morris was convicted of violating the computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a fine of $10,000. He now works for MIT.

In the Dark

Earlier this week, about a million Swedish Internet sites went down for an hour when routine maintenance caused disruption to every single .se address (the country's domain). The problem was caused by an "incorrectly configured script" in an update of the .se domain. Imagine if this would have happened to the .com domain, taking down tens of millions of websites around the world? It probably wouldn't have stopped the world from turning on its axis, but it may have come pretty close.

Shutdown Computer Automatically at a Specific time

For last few days I was searching for a technique to shutdown my laptop automatically at a specific time. My broadband package allow me to download unlimited data only at night i.e from 2300 hrs to 0600 hrs. So, I want some sort of technique to shutdown my desktop before 0600 hrs otherwise I will be charged for downloading data by my ISP. And finally I got a trick. You might also be facing such type of problem. But don't worry friends a trick is here to solve your problem.

Trick 1:

• Start > Run
• Type 'shutdown -s -t 1800' without quotes
• Click OK
• A dialog will appear showing the countdown timer

Note: 1800 is the amount of time remaining before your computer shutdowns. 1800 is in seconds - 60sec * 30 min = 1800 sec. If you want to shutdown your desktop after 1 hour simply enter 3600 sec, as 60 sec * 60 min = 3600 sec.

How to cancel the shutdown timer ?

• Start > Run
• Type 'shutdown -a' without quotes

Trick 2:

• Right click on desktop, Go to New > Shortcut
• Type 'shutdown -s -t 1800' without quotes
• Click Next
• Type whatever you want to name the shortcut link.
• Click Finish.
• Now a shortcut is created in the desktop.
• Just double click it and your shutdown timer will start.
• You can customize the look of the shortcut.
• Right click on the shortcut icon, Go to Properties > Customize > Change Icon > Select any icon from the gallery > Click OK

Trick 3:

In this trick we will create a shutdown job by using the 'at' command, which is used to schedule task manually in windows.

• Start > Run
• Type 'at 13:26 shutdown -s' without quotes, it will shutdown your computer at 13:26
• If you type 'at 13:26 shutdown -s -t 60', it will shutdown your computer after 60 sec from 13:26 hrs
• Click OK

How to view the list of jobs along with their attributes in your computer and how to abort the jobs ?

• Start > Run
• Type cmd
• Type 'at' without quotes. It will display the list of jobs in your computer.along with their Status ID, Time of execution, Command to be executed etc.

Now, if you want to cancel the shutdown job that we had created.

• Start > Run
• Type cmd
• Type 'at 1 /delete' without quotes. Here '1' represents Status ID of the job. I have already mentioned in the above paragraph how to view the Status ID of the job.